ORNL people

Jun Xu of the Chemical and Analytical Sciences Division has been elected to a 9-year term as a member of the International Committee on Positron and Positronium Chemistry.

ESD’s Steve Lindberg gave an opening day plenary and presented six papers at the Fifth World Congress on Mercury as a Global Pollutant in Rio de Janeiro recently. Co-authors were Tilden Meyers of the Network of Ocean and Air Associates and Hong Zhang, a postdoc working with Lindberg. Jerry Lin, a postdoc working with ESD’s Meng-Dawn Cheng on aerosol modeling, made two presentations at the conference. Lindberg will co-chair the sixth congress in 2001, which will be held in Minamata, Japan. The Minamata Bay was recently reopened to fishing after a decades-long, $1.5 million cleanup of mercury pollution.

ESD’s Bob Luxmoore was recently elected president of the Soil Science Society of America.

S.M. Bowman and J.E. Horwedel of the Computational Physics and Mathematics Division received the Nuclear Criticality Safety Division Best Paper Award at the annual meeting of the American Nuclear Society. Their paper, titled “KENO3D Visualization Tool for KENO V.a Geometry Mode—Development of KENO3D,” was funded jointly by the NRC Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards and the DOE/EM Office of Packaging Certification.

The ORNL Small Business Office won the booth exhibition award at the 19th Annual Minority Business Opportunity Fair held at the Nashville Convention Center September 1–2. The exhibit profiled DOE as well as ORNL. It’s the second time that the ORNL Small Business Office, led by Will Minter, has received special recognition for its small business exhibit.

Six ORNL fire and rescue unit members have been entered onto Hurst Emergency Products’ Green Cross Registry for their rescue of a truck driver in May. Eddie Golden, Larry Shaw, Thomas Bethea, Mike Leach, Mark Alderson and Jim Fritz used the “Jaws of Life” to free the driver from the liquid nitrogen truck after it left Highway 95 and overturned. Hurst manufactures the Jaws of Life rescue system. Liquid nitrogen is nontoxic but can asphyxiate and cause freeze burns. The driver, who was pinned for 45 minutes, was treated and released. ORNL Reporter featured ORNL’s fire and rescue operation in the September issue.